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Some real talk from a very tired PhD student

This post is going to be different from what I normally write. It’s going to seem a little bleak for awhile, but stick with me, because it’s going to have a happy ending.

You know the way that some girls dream of their wedding day for their whole lives? That’s kind of like me, but instead of with getting married, it was with getting my PhD (I know, I was a weird kid). Starting almost 15 years ago when I was an adjunct professor, and to this day, people will sometimes send me emails that begin “Dear Dr. Federer,” and I think, not yet, but one day.

Eventually that day did come, and I got into this PhD program, working on a topic I’m really fascinated by and I think is pretty timely and relevant. It was great. There was the one little catch that I also had a full-time job that I love and a lease on an apartment that was well beyond grad student means, but I’m a pretty motivated person and I figured I could handle working full-time and doing the PhD program part-time.

This plan went fine the first semester. So fine that I figured, well, why not just go ahead and do a third class in the spring? Being a full-time PhD student with a high-pressure, full-time job? Sure! WHY NOT. The semester is halfway through now, and I’m not dead yet. So this weekend, when I was looking at the PhD student handbook and I realized that after this semester, I’ll need just 4 more classes to complete my coursework, a cockamamie plan popped into my head. I had this little conversation with myself:

evil Lisa: what if you did all four classes over the summer?
regular Lisa: I don’t know, while working full-time? That sounds like a bit much.
evil Lisa: but then once you’re done you could advance to candidacy. Maybe you could finish the whole thing in two years! I bet no one has ever even done that!
regular Lisa: but this sounds like torture
evil Lisa: why don’t you at least check the summer schedule and see if there are any interesting courses?regular Lisa: hmm, well, some of these do look pretty good. And they’re online. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
evil Lisa: REGISTER FOR THEM.

And I did.

To my credit, a part of me knew this plan was not my greatest idea, so today, when I had a meeting with a potential new advisor, since my advisor is leaving for a new position, I said, “I had this idea, but I think it might be a little crazy,” and I told her and she looked at me very patiently, the way you look at a person who has lost all touch with reality and said, “yes, that’s crazy.”

After that conversation, I came back to the graduate student lounge to wait for my class to start, and I looked at the draft of a paper I’m working on, I looked at my slides for a presentation I’m giving in class this afternoon, I looked at my Outlook calendar for work, and I hated all of it. The presentation looked like garbage and the paper seemed to be going nowhere. I’d spent hours working on this paper, and it really had seemed like an interesting idea at the time, but now it seemed like a completely pointless waste of time. The more I thought about data sharing and reuse, the more I hated it.

How could this be? I love data! I could talk about data all day! How could it be that I suddenly hated data? That was when I realized that I’ve been going about this all wrong and my ridiculous approach was actually ruining the entire experience. It’s like if you love ice cream and you have a gallon and you try to jut devour the entire thing in one sitting. Of course it would be a horrible experience. You’d be sick and you’d hate yourself, and you’d definitely hate ice cream. On the other hand, if you had a little bit of the ice cream over several days, you’d enjoy it a lot more.

I have this instinct from my days of long-distance running: when I’m many miles in and tired, and I want to slow down, that’s when I push myself to run even faster. The slower I run, the longer it’ll take me to finish, but if I just run as hard as I can, the run will be over sooner. I’m not sure about the validity of this approach from a distance running perspective, but I think it’s fair to say it’s a completely stupid idea when it comes to a PhD.

People warned me when I started this program that everyone gets burned out at some point, and I thought, not me, I love my topic, there’s no way I could ever get tired of it. That’s why it was especially confusing when I sat there looking at my paper draft yesterday and just hating the guts out of data sharing and reuse. Fortunately, I don’t hate data. I hate torturing myself.

So, that’s why I’m not going to! Could I take four courses over the summer? I suppose. Could I finish a PhD in two years while working full-time? I guess it’s possible. But what would be the point, if I emerged from the process angry and tired and hating data? Time to slow down and enjoy the ride, and de-register for at least two of those summer classes.